Roman Britain

London's Last Roman

Edited from BBC News, 23 May 2007

The remains of what experts believe was one of the last Romans
to have lived in London formed the centre-piece of an exhibition which
opened in May 2007.

Visitors to the Museum of London were able to see the
headless skeleton of a man, thought to be in his late thirties or early
forties, laid in a limestone coffin.

It was found last year when a £36m building project was
undertaken at St Martins-in-the-Field, in Central London.

Curators said the man's death dated back to about AD 410.

Wealthy and respected

Describing the find as "hugely significant" experts said the man
had died around the time at which Roman administration was kicked
out of Londinium (located under the modern
City financial area), and the imperial court itself at Ravenna was
forced to abandon any pretence of governing Britain.

Francis Grew, senior curator at the museum, said the man would
have been wealthy and well-respected and may even have been a
"commuter" into the Roman city of Londinium.

"The man in the coffin may well have been living in a
substantial Roman villa estate somewhere around Trafalgar Square - a
big country house maybe with a little village, even, associated with
it," he said.

The sarcophagus, along with a Roman tile kiln, Saxon grave goods
and pottery unearthed at the site, sheds light on a "hidden" two
hundred year period in the history of the capital, the museum said.

A clay pot dating from about AD 500 suggests that the Saxon
settlement of Lundenwic, built on the site of what is now Covent
Garden, was established at least a hundred years earlier than previously
believed.

Jewellery, glass and metal vessels found in graves of people
buried on the site after AD 600, who may have been Christians, were
also on show at the museum.